The Guardian is all a-froth because the Garrick Club, one of the historic gentlemen’s clubs of London, is still, well, a club for gentlemen as opposed to ladies.
In response, the Telegraph’s William Sitwell advocates for freedom of association:
“All-male members’ clubs reflect our natural tribal desires – get over it or get your own”.
… that central charge of archaic, sexist exclusion is nonsense. First because of the idea that there is something wrong with men wanting to be in the company of other men.
It is possible to be a decent male member of society – who champions equal opportunities in the workplace, changes nappies, generally strives to be a domestic god and is (joyfully) surrounded by women and small children at home – and, at the same time, enjoy a lunch with the boys. In the same way that others might want to hang out at the golf club, or in the snooker room. Or similarly how members of the LGBTQ+ community might wish to hang out in a club or bar or pub with their folk, or players in an all-female hockey team might wish to spend an evening with each other sipping champagne in a hot tub.
Humans are tribal, gravitating towards those whom they look, act, feel and sound like. But that is not incongruous with supporting positive discrimination in society, promoting the visualisation of minorities in fashion or policing or politics.
For the values that represent you formally are not necessarily jettisoned when you’re having fun. Which is what clubs are for.
The problem with “get your own”, like women’s football is that the women simply don’t support their own clubs, which is why two London women’s clubs have closed this year alone.
Women-only clubhouse which offered high-flying Londoners the chance to rub shoulders with Amal Clooney and Gloria Estefan for £8,000-a-year membership shuts due to lack of interest
Can’t remember the name of the second one, not my genre.
“Don’t try to understand women. Women understand women. And they hate each other.” – Bundy, Al.
See also – Bill Burr on women’s sports (various).
llater,
llamas
Amazing how they call for judges who are members to be prevented from their job because they will somehow be biased by virtue of being members, as if it was impossible for people to separate their leisure from their job.
But then I suppose for Guardianistas, it is.
I’d never heard of the club, but now I’m aware of them, I support them just to spite the Guardian and its left-liberal bourgeois readership.
Although I am a passionate advocate of freedom of association (and consequently freedom of non association too), I wonder how we’d all feel were this club to allow women but exclude black people, Jewish people, and disabled people.
Fraser Orr asks,
“I wonder how we’d all feel were this club to allow women but exclude black people, Jewish people, and disabled people.”
If a club did that, I would feel contempt for the club and its members. In so far as it were in my power, I would ostracise them in return, on the grounds that I didn’t want to associate with such prejudiced individuals. But I would still defend their right to do as they please.
In the old days (and perhaps in the new days) it sometimes happened that membership of certain clubs like the Garrick was an unofficial requirement in order to advance in some professions. When it was rare for a woman to be a lawyer or a judge, that was an used as argument against male-only clubs. I cannot remember the details, but during the latter days of the Raj when rising numbers of Indians were coming to the UK to be educated and qualify as lawyers etc., I think there was some controversy on similar grounds about Indian barristers not being able to join some London club, which was settled in the Indian lawyers’ favour. But that sort of thing is a justification for open and impartial selection procedures, not for forbidding men to have somewhere to have expensive boozy lunches with other men.
I should add that it can happen that such an exclusion occurs on better grounds than mere bigotry – for instance a running club could “exclude” disabled people, or a club for Iranian exiles could “exclude” non-Iranians, without arousing my ire.
If it’s a private club, I’d mind my own business, and if implored by liberals, Communists and fake conservatives that I ought to be outraged, I’d tell them to go pound sand, because I aren’t doing their dirty work for them.
The Guardian does not like Freedom of Association – but then it hates liberty generally.
The Guardian has become the opposite of the Manchester Guardian in the 19th century – it started off committed to rolling back the state, less government spending, less regulations, Freedom of Speech, and so on – and now stands for the opposite in both economics and civil liberties.
Full disclosure – they are not fond of me either. But it was a nice photograph (i.e. a photograph taken when I was much less old than I am now) of me that once graced their front page.
By the way – American readers may be interested to learn that the socialist “The Nation” magazine started off as a Classical Liberal, roll-back-the-state, publication.
As John O’Sullivan (former adviser to Margaret Thatcher and now head of the Danube Institute in Hungary) is fond of pointing out – any organisation (even supposedly organisations that are nothing to do with politics – such as the National Trust or the Royal National Lifeboat Institute) that does not wage a constant war against the left (constant – never relaxing vigilance, not even for a moment) will be taken over by the left (by the broad and easy road that leads to evil) and turned to the purposes of evil.
My language means what it says (when I say evil – that is what I mean) – for example the University of Buckingham was created to fight the left, to be alterative to the universities the left had infiltrated and taken control of, yet, a few years ago, it set up a course to teach about the United Nations – and a leftist (a “Tribune” socialist) took control of that course, in recent months he has been pushing vicious anti Israeli propaganda.
It can happen anywhere – to any institution, or publication, or CLUB.
The left are always there, seeking an opportunity to infiltrate and turn good into evil.
“exclude Jewish people” – Christian clubs exclude believing Jews, so do Muslim clubs and atheist clubs (and so on).
“exclude black people” – so a club for (say) gingers, should include people who ae not ginger?
Y’all gonna hate Alcoholics Anonymous then…
I would have hoped the guardian was equally concerned about, say, the recent trend of theatres barring people of a certain colour from attending performances.
@Natalie Solent (Essex)
If a club did that, I would feel contempt for the club and its members.
So that would also be my reaction and my approach. And I am also perfectly comfortable with men’s only clubs or women’s only clubs. But I wonder why that is? What is it about sex that makes it legitimately a target for discrimination, but race or religion or disability status does not (in a “decency” sense rather than a legal sense.) Why would you not also feel contempt for the men’s club?
It is interesting that on the other side we feel justified in DEMANDING men be excluded from some women’s clubs, like sororities, or ladies locker rooms. Or we did until ten minutes ago. Which seems perfectly reasonable for very obvious reasons of biology. No fraternity says “no girls may join” and no men’s locker room would be scandalized were a woman to enter. Perhaps this arises out of a perceived idea (whether true or not) of the extra fragility and risk associated with being a woman in a male dominated space.
And on the other side, I think few would find a problem with a club that ONLY accepted Black people, or ONLY accepted Jewish people. It seems that this is not a commutative property.
Do these two rules mean the same thing: “only men allowed” and “no women allowed”; or “only black people allowed” and “no white people allowed”? When answering, remember that language is not mathematics and human relationships are not based on set theory.
Fraser Orr writes, “Why would you not also feel contempt for the men’s club?”
All over the world, in every era and in every culture, men sometimes get together with other men to do male things, including talk about women, and women sometimes get together with other women to do female things, including talking about men. Wanting to do this sometimes (but not all the time) seems to be hard-wired into human biology.
In contrast, the factors that make me strongly disapprove of a club that excluded black people or Jews are very much related to the history of the last few centuries – the enslavement of black people and the persecution of the Jews culminating in their attempted extermination. I’m not a believer in racial guilt, and I certainly disapprove of “reparations” being paid to random people of the same ethnicity as the long-dead actual victims, but I do see a need to make a point of not treating people unequally for racial reasons.
If history had been otherwise, it would not be a big deal. No one has any big objection to clubs for gingers, as Paul Marks suggested, because, while gingers might be mocked sometimes, no one ever made slaves of them or tried to wipe them out.
“Eliminate whiteness” is the same level of extermination as “From the river to the Sea” you know.
@Natalie,
However, historically women have also suffered many of the oppressions that black or jewish or disabled people have. And, as you yourself mentioned, sometimes exclusion from the boys club has indeed been detrimental in measurable ways to women. Of course women have got together with women to talk about lady things, and men have got together with men to talk about men things. But Black people have also got together to talk about black things (whatever that means) and so too with Jewish people.
Your argument seems to be twofold — men’s groups and women’s groups existed throughout history, so their existence is not a historical anomaly; and excluding black people (or others) has an ugly history that makes us particularly sensitive to their exclusion.
But neither of these arguments seems to draw a distinction between that group of humans called women, and that group of humans called black people. To suggest that “Whites only” is ugly because of the history of racism would demand we also be offended by “men only” because of the very real oppression women have suffered in the past.
I’m not saying I think men only clubs should be illegal. I’m saying they are surely populated by anachronistic blowhards. And, were I a woman, they’d be the last place I’d want to join. “No girls allowed in our clubhouse”. What? Are we ten years old?
Decades ago, I was on a small team sent down to Kansas City to manage some litigation. A senior team leader, me, and a young woman (young – my age) lawyer. We all three had been running the litigation from MN, but trial approached and it was time to be on-scene.
Local counsel set up a meeting with the oppo for mediation purposes. We all showed up, and it turned out to be in a back meeting room in a guys-only club. Big deal kind of place for the local legal beagles.
We tried for a change, but it was too close to meeting time to work. So, my friend the girl lawyer got aced out of participation in a big case that did good things for my professional standing.
So, I’m not a fan of the concept.
I wonder how we’d all feel were this club to allow women but exclude black people, Jewish people, and disabled people.
Orthodox Judaism is not exactly kind to the disabled, unless you get down to the synagogue on a Saturday without your wheelchair.
You don’t need to ban people, just make life very difficult for the outsiders.
I’d be perfectly fine with it, since I don’t believe in coercing people to admit those they don’t want to admit to their property.
I have already pointed out that religious clubs exclude people who are not part of their religion – and rightly so.
Black organisations also expel white people who are shown to be only pretending to have black ancestry – and there have been such people (who also mess around with their hair and with make up – to try ad give a false impression of what their race is – and such people have even wormed their way into leadership positions, before they were found out).
And associations of women exclude men.
All this is called “Freedom of Association” – which totalitarians (supporters of tyranny) are against.
As every school child used to know – Freedom of Association must, logically, include the freedom to not associate. To say “no” to a person who wishes to join your club or other group.
“For where two or three are gathered together minding their own business, there am I in the midst of them.”
Guardian 3:22
Natalie Solent said:
Well, at least not yet… Although, the old premium price paid for gingers in the various Ottoman slave markets might apply. I recall reading in some of the documentation of the old slave trade from Finland south through Russia that redheads were a premium luxury good, assuming the rest of their appearance was attractive. Exotic, see…?
Fraser Orr said:
I note that, of course, you leave off that there were also, at one and the same time, a bunch of white males that were equally “oppressed”, some in the precise same ways that your other favored victim groups were, and in other ways that were the precise reverse.
I’m about f*cking tired of these “Oppression Olympics”, where it’s all about how and who got oppressed in the past. The sad, raw fact is that for the vast majority, it was all “oppression”, all the time… Regardless of skin color, sex, or anything else. Life sucked for everyone, and it’s the abiding irony of our times that the primary group responsible for pulling the majority out of their misery is now the one being blamed for it all.
News flash, black America: You’d still be slaves, if the 98.4% of white males in this country when slavery was a thing hadn’t decided to do away with the institution. You did not, I fear, manage to free yourselves; that was a gift, given to you by cis-hetero white males. Paid for, I might emphasize, with a whole lot of their blood and treasure.
Same with the other ungrateful beneficiaries, who seem to be hell-bent on making the majority of the white males who listened to their arguments and then said “Yeah, sounds fair, let’s change these age-old customs (which were enforced by EVERYONE, including a whole lot of women…) to make this better…”
Frankly, when the time comes? I’m going to laugh my ass off when the cultural dividers come right back down on the current lot of “formerly oppressed”, because that’s what you all are aiming for, with your mindless drive to prove all the ancient stereotypes and bigotries true. You’re thinking you’re on top, with your numbers and your cultural lock on the organs of the media, but what you’ve never known is that the only thing that made them what they were was that people actually paid attention to those because they reflected a truth, a reality. That reality is re-asserting itself, and you’re not going to survive the experience.
It’s a sad fact, but for the majority of black Americans to be safe in their homes and persons, a massive swathe of young black males have to be incarcerated. Why? Because of the way you raise them, or their intrinsic natures. Doesn’t make a difference, either way, but the sad fact is, you want to live life securely? Those self-created monsters of yours have to be locked up. That’s not whitey’s fault, either: Whitey ain’t raising your kids to be thugs; that’s purely on you, black America.
Same with the women of the world; you’ve been allowed at the levers of power: What have you done with that, except attempt to implement your fantasies of oppression in the opposite direction. Where are the women saying, now that the evidence is massively there, that “boys aren’t doing so well”, and trying to help them? Oh, hell no… It’s all triumphal “Girl boss power”, and zero attention paid to the fact that the boys they’re shortchanging and oppressing in their turn are emphatically not the ones who supposedly oppressed the female “victims” of the past.
Kipling’s Gods of the Copybook Headings are in the wings, warming up, ready to deliver the bad news about how there are still universal truths that must be acknowledged, realities that play out. I have a stock of popcorn waiting, to watch the final denouement of it all, as the illogical conclusions are reached and everything comes crashing to the ground.
@Paul Marks
All this is called “Freedom of Association” – which totalitarians (supporters of tyranny) are against.
Sure, but just because something isn’t illegal doesn’t mean it isn’t indecent or immoral. If you hang out with Nazis or if you refuse to dine in a restaurant where black people eat, you aren’t a criminal, but you are an asshole.
Fraser Orr said:
Alternatively, you’re smart enough to know where you’re likely to be beaten, robbed, and/or murdered by blacks. ‘Cos, don’t you know, whitey done deserves whatever he gets for being white.
Frankly, the more I think about it, the more I find myself in agreement with Scott Adams: They don’t want you there? Fine; don’t be there. That means I don’t support their businesses or them. I also don’t go to places and venues they frequent, knowing damn well I’m going to have to leave my car unattended in a high-crime area, and that I’ll also have to take the risk of walking back and forth from said car. Don’t have those problems at venues and businesses where they don’t welcome blacks, now do I?
Common sense is returning us to segregation, thanks to the do-gooder “activist” mentality that excuses uncivilized behavior from blacks because they’re black.
I have also noted that if I were to defend myself from any said criminal blacks, I’m going to be the one going to jail and seeing my name in the news for “racial prejudice”. So, that being the case? I see a black face in a business, I don’t go there.
Irony here? I started out as an idealistic fool that was “against racism”. Not no more I’m not… I done been taught by sad experience by some of the most dedicated teachers out there: Blacks.
Fraser Orr said…
“Although I am a passionate advocate of freedom of association (and consequently freedom of non association too), I wonder how we’d all feel were this club to allow women but exclude black people, Jewish people, and disabled people.”
How do you feel about the Congressional Black Caucus in the US?
In 2006, a non-African American man named Steve Cohen running for Congress pledged he would join the CBC because the majority of his district was African American and he wanted to represent their interests. The Caucus said they would refuse his membership because they needed to stay Black.
Looking back on it all, I’m not really sure that you can successfully thread the needle with regards post-slavery race relations when most slaves were as fixedly identifiable as African-descended slaves in the US were.
Now, granted, there are more than a few former slaves that managed to pass for white and blend in. I’ve (supposedly…) got a couple of those in the family tree. I’ve also got scads of former serfs and other such-like effective slaves back there, lurking, but they were all able to blend in with the “free” population such that there was really no way of telling.
Same thing happened with Roman slaves… After a bit, the former slaves and descendants of slaves were indistinguishable from everyone else living where the Romans got to, so… Yeah. Given a few generations, everyone forgot who had who in shackles.
Not so with American blacks. And, because of that fact, the situation isn’t the same, and likely can’t be. My guess is that the only way to really solve the problem is going to prove to be a separation, but then the issue becomes “What the hell do we do with all the miscegenated victims whose ancestors were either forcibly boinked by Massah, or did it voluntarily?”
Lot of American blacks don’t recognize the fact that they’re not welcome in a lot of African countries because they’re seen as embarrassing mongrel half-breeds. Friend of mine traced his ancestry back to West Africa, and did some visiting. Came back severely disillusioned, and much more pro-American. Apparently, no bones were made about his ancestors being sold on to whitey because “reasons”. Losers in tribal wars that get sold aren’t usually welcomed back by the victors; it was ethnic cleansing they wanted, ethnic cleansing that they got, and they weren’t too happy to have the happy-dappy results come back on them.
In short, I don’t know that this crap is really fixable. I thought it was, once, but… Not any more. Maybe it was, but with the agitators doing what they did, we’re back in a state that might just be worse than the 1960s. The militant blacks don’t seem to be too math-aware; they don’t understand that they’re not a majority population, and if they keep pushing, especially against the “newcomers”, it ain’t going to be pretty. Mexicans and Central Americans don’t like blacks, period. The folkways and folk memories are pointed on the issue… Which is why Belize is what it is.
@Rocco
How do you feel about the Congressional Black Caucus in the US?
How do I feel about it? I dislike the very idea of it, though of course they can do whatever they want.
However, see the discussion above.